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 Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2017 6:01 pm
Dear Peter,
I miss you. I miss you a lot.
It is a sweet ache inside of me -- painful, but good, and I will carry it for you always in return for the love that you bore me. I hate you for it sometimes, and then I hate myself for that. They talk of love and hate as though they are opposites on a spectrum, when really it is like getting a bloody nose in the middle of the day and dripping on your favourite sweater and turning the sweater inside out to get through the rest of the day but the stain is still there. Does that make sense? I don't know if it makes sense. It doesn't matter. I'm the only one that's going to read this and I know what I mean. It feels right to me.
I've met someone. I've met someone and he's really I let him ******** me -- I don't know how to talk about this. Peter, I miss you. I've said that already.
I cannot tell if he likes me very much.
He doesn't like me very much, but that's okay. I don't think he likes anyone very much. Don't worry, though. We're safe. He's even gentle sometimes. I think about you a lot. Especially when-
I try not to think about you.
--
Dorian swallowed around the lump in his throat. Tapped the shell of his fading pen against the edge of his journal. He sat in his hand-me-down chair at his recycled desk, bathed in lamplight. Murphy rested on her belly nearby, chin on the floor; eyelids droopy. She snored- but it was only a little, and made him smile to hear.
He chucked his pen in the garbage, and then took up another.
--
I don't know where the cat is. She is a peculiarity- conspicuous in her silence. I really ought to check. I think you'd like her. I'm sure I've said that before.
How are you?
I feel like a child, trying to reach you from here. I know that you can not answer. I wish that you could. Do you remember how hot the baths were at the farm? And the stink of slaughtered bird. And the belt.
If you were here-- we could run away again. There is nobody who would miss me. Not that I am deserving of being missed.
That is self-deprecating.
--
A meow from the door. Rocket poked her silver face around the frame. Stared for a moment at the pitbull on the floor, and then turned her yellow eyes on the man that had looked up from his diary to stare back at her.
"Hey there," he said.
She ignored him and moved to bother the dog, who snorted in her sleep.
--
I have been really blessed in my life. The memory of your love buoys me. I worry about letting you go sometimes. That I might not be able to. That I want to, but I don't want to, because you were good. I am only half of myself without you. I am the other side of the sweater, and the stain that bleeds through.
-D
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Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2017 7:00 pm
Dear Peter,
The ink of my self-hatred mars the pages of this book.
I'm sorry my letters are not more positive, or more inspiring. I have had a bit of a time managing myself without you. I think of your hands steadying me at night, and I don't know why the world gave you to me, but I am grateful every moment of every day for the strength of your hands. Even the ghost of them helps when I feel unsteady.
I am sorry about the bad stuff too.
That I let him do what he did.
I shouldn't have. I know better. I am weak.
I wish I could say that the course of my life is changing. That I have found it within myself to live as courageously as you did. I let him use me. He comes to my office at work and I can't say no. I like it, but that's probably obvious.
There was another guy. At the bar last Thursday. He was okay. More like Gregory Peck in Mockingbird than Brando in Streetcar. If you know what I mean.
I am skating on a steep slope, baby, and- you know me. You remember. I am ashamed of the pleasure that I find in the force of other men. It's nothing personal. They just make it easier to forget. But that's why we're in this mess in the first place, isn't it?
I want all of them to love me, and all of them to push my face in the dirt.
What even is that? How is it possible to want both of those things?
I miss you, but I am doing okay. I will be okay. This is just a temporary ride I'm on. Like that time in Calgary with the cowboys. My first time on a horse. You were fun that weekend, but then. You were fun every weekend.
There aren't a lot of cowboys in Destiny City.
I don't know why I said that.
--
Dorian paused in his writing to scritch the backs of Rocket's ears. Insistent and stubborn, she pressed against him with all of the authority of a feline denied too long the affection owed to her.
He sat under the window in the living room, legs crossed and gradually going numb.
--
My hands are always cold. I've started wearing socks to bed at night-- I think of you when I do, and how much you hated that. I think that if you were here I would tangle my feet with yours and then I wouldn't have to wear the socks. Is that sad? I would like it to be sweet, but you're dead gone, and there is nowhere else for me to warm my feet for very long. So it MUST be sad.
I'm waiting for him to text me back.
He doesn't always.
I spilled coffee on him- that's how we met. And I broke his computer. It is a really fancy computer, Peter. I want him to text me back, but he's not going to.
He's not going to, and that's-
--
His cellphone vibrated where it lay next to his hip on the floor. Determined not to look at it, to make some kind of point, Dorian bit his lip and continued to write, a bubble of anticipation rising in his throat.
--
- okay.
I hope that you are well, wherever you are. I hope that you do not judge me too harshly for this.
-D
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